Patch 1.7 Test Realms Are Up!

[MongoJerry]

Patch notes here

[MongoJerry]

*Need Before Greed and Group Loot options have been improved. The rolling window that appears when an item of the threshold and above is looted now has three buttons: a Need button (the dice), a Greed button (the coin), and a close button. Any players who select Need will get a chance to roll first for the item, with the high roller winning. If no one selects Need, all characters who selected Greed will then roll, with the highest roll winning the item. If everyone closes the window, the item becomes lootable by anyone in the group.

*You can now disable the slow scrolling of text when you are receiving a new quest.

*Opening the overhead map will now "ping" your location your map (to make it easier to notice your location when there are many friendlies nearby on the overhead map).

All good things.

Actually, pretty much the whole patch looks really good. I'm looking forward to it!

[Sir_Die_alot]

Improved Starfire - The stun effect can now be resisted.

I know what they meant, but it made me chuckle.

[Kevin]

I'll start with the stuff that bugs me the most

Switching weapons in combat triggers a 1 second global cooldown for all abilities for rogues and a 1.5 second global cooldown for everyone else.

This hurts me. I can live with it but it hurts me as warrior since I swap a fair bit in combat. No more charge weapon swapped to my tanking set because I can't 1.5 seconds to sunder something after a charge most of the time.

We have determined that the defense statistic was being applied to items too liberally, causing those items to be stronger than they should have been relative to other items of the same level with different effects. As a result, we have reduced the amount of defense points on all items with bonuses to defense by approximately 33% in order to bring those items in line with other similar items.

In my bitter knee jerk reaction I read that as "We want arms fury people in their PvP sets to be better tanks so we are changing the gear that tanks like to wear". Now if they keep the +def on the crafted stuff the same so that a crafted item is actually desirable, I can live with that. I'll be on a made arcanit search but I can live with it. I'm losing a good 20 defense off my current Molten Core gear set-up with this change. I had been running about 3% crit rate in there. I'll be up around 5% again now I think. Not horrible but I'm hoping they looked at all the items and didn't do just a flat change to everything. Some items will never be worn if you drop the +def on them too much. I can live with it but am not happy again.


Lots of other stuff is very very good. Really looking forward to the druid and hunter changes. Very glad to hear the agi is gone of the devout set. Really happy to not lose shield wall, etc if I stance change. Don't care too much about the changed to retaliate since you still get 2 swings a second with it. That shouldn't change things too much, it just prevents you from Farming the Deadmines in 10 mintues by aggroing everything then turing it on. :) It's still an "I win" button. Really most of the rest of the patch is good stuff. But I wanted to start with the bad for me. :)

[nobbie]

We have determined that the defense statistic was being applied to items too liberally, causing those items to be stronger than they should have been relative to other items of the same level with different effects. As a result, we have reduced the amount of defense points on all items with bonuses to defense by approximately 33% in order to bring those items in line with other similar items.

So, does that mean that the Armorsmith's Enchanted Thorium Platemail items become an even more expensive luxury than they have been already?

[Watto44]

A couple of things.

First, the weapon switch thing is going to hurt a lot of people. I know my druid will hate it, since I use mods to switch between weapons when I shapeshift. No more bear'n'charge or cast'n'grasp. :(

Secondly, why is it that the blizzard downloader works so well for the test realm patch, but horrendously for the retail patches?? This has me completely baffled. :)

[Quark]

First, the weapon switch thing is going to hurt a lot of people.  I know my druid will hate it, since I use mods to switch between weapons when I shapeshift.  No more bear'n'charge or cast'n'grasp. :(
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I agree with the weapon swapping change.

I don't think they did enough to slow Rogues down, though. Many Rogues do their most damage by Ambushing with a dagger, hitting a quick macro, then Sinister Striking the rest of the way. Given Ambush takes 60 Energy, you can do an Ambush, wait a second, Weapon Swap, wait a second, and you've lost nothing because you simply allowed energy regen to kick in. Now you have 60 energy instead of 40 when you start SS spamming.

This, in a sideways method, deals partly with one of my complaints as a Rogue - it's too easy for a combat Rogue to get nearly the same benefit out of Ambush as a dagger Rogue.

[lfd]

Damage absorption no longer protects against falling [...] damage.

Ouch. That's going to catch a few priests out. I know I have a habit of shielding up to make long falls from the zeppelins. Seems a bit of a spiteful change.

[Quark]

Patch notes here
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Rogues
    * Mace Specialization - The stun effect can now be resisted.
    * Shoot Bow/Gun/Crossbow - Should no longer cause a global cooldown on all other abilities.

Mace Specialization - so when are they gonna address the fact that itemization causes most combat rogues to spec Swords?

Shoot - nice to hear. Especially with my 3.3 second Crossbow from AV. Shoot a target, back up, Shoot a target, stand there and get whacked for over 2 seconds before I can do anything.

Battleground "holidays" have been added to Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin. Holidays occur during most weekends, starting on Thursday night at midnight and continuing until Tuesday morning. During a holiday, emmissaries from that Battleground will be found in the major cities, and honor/faction rewards for performing objectives in that battleground are increased.

I don't know. I'm going to officially say "I'll wait and see" but I don't know if this is enough. I don't want to play AV once a week, I want to play AV when I'm not raiding.

Fixed a bug that would cause players to stand up when a turnin was made in Alterac Valley.

And the casters scream with joy.

Racial "Leaders" have been strengthened, and are now worth slightly less honor.

Because they were such easy and common targets before? :blink:

[Mirajj]

Alright, I downloaded the client and played around on the server for a bit this morning.

For the most part, I kept with my current build, which is 33 Marks, the rest in BeastM. In the Marksman tree, in addition to changing Trueshot some, they switched Hawkeye and Barrage.

After retraining my pet (giving her 1000 more AC) I headed off to look into the new hunter quest. It's a "find a perfect this, look for an excellent that' sort of quest, and I found someone who had finished it and was willing to show off the rewards. You get a weapon or a choice between two trinkets. None of the three overly impressed me.

SPecced as I was, I noticed next to no difference in DPS. The +dps they've added to Trueshot is offset by the dps they've taken off the Improved Aspect of the Hawk skill. So it looks like for my style of play...there will be very few changes, except my cat will be a bit harder to kill.

[nobbie]

Where ist the Druid's GROWL ability (in Bear form) on the test servers? It's missing as far as I can see. Completing the Bear quest didn't get it either.

[Phrozen Heart]

Guild ranks and player notes are now filtered by the profanity filter.

Not really anything important, I was just a little concerned what guilds were branding some of their members... :lol:

Racial "Leaders" have been strengthened, and are now worth slightly less honor.

With DHKs for killing a freakin pie vendor (who spawns back in 30 seconds anyway) and less honor for leaders, they REALLY don't like people doing city raids huh?

Shield Slam - Threat caused increased.

Shoot Bow/Gun/Crossbow - Should no longer cause a global cooldown on all other abilities.

Nice.

Retaliation - Will now cause a maximum of 30 retaliatory strikes in 15 seconds. In addition, retaliatory strikes will not be possible while stunned.

This should make tanking a crap load of mobs at once a little more interesting...

[vor_lord]

Damage absorption is now applied before damage splitting effects.

Anyone know what the ramifications of this are?

[Pesmerga]

I'm just happy to have a new quest, and to make Marneus badass....

This pet thing gives me reason to train up some other beasties thought.

Marneus - Fire Resistance Bear
Ragnar - Armor/Tank Bear
Dogmeat (I believe I'm doing this for Arleas) - DPS Dog type dealy.

[kershner]

The one that concerns me is:

Fixed a bug where the Dazed ability used by creatures when attacking targets from behind was countered/dispelled by some spells (e.g. Blessing of Freedom).

I assume that this means that priest shields will no longer stop the Dazed ability. :(

An annoyance, as a GM told me that this was working as intended, is that Mind Control will no longer regenerate mana while channeled:

Fixed a bug where mana was being regenerated while channelling spells that use mana.

-kersh

Stonemaul | Undead 60 Priest

[Concillian]

Ouch.  That's going to catch a few priests out.  I know I have a habit of shielding up to make long falls from the zeppelins.  Seems a bit of a spiteful change.
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I'm not sure it's for PW:S at all, it's definitely for shadowform and defensive stance, and maybe shield was an exploit too. In defensive stance my warrior could merrily jump off Thunder Bluff or the Great lift, land and keep running in stride. So could a priest in shadowform. This is for those with % damage reduction skills that could effectively fall for infinite distances because the max damage you would take is 100% of your HP (which would then be reduced by a percentage, you you'd never actually take full damage). I don't know if shield has the same effect as those with % damage reduction.

[Olon97]

We have determined that the defense statistic was being applied to items too liberally, causing those items to be stronger than they should have been relative to other items of the same level with different effects. As a result, we have reduced the amount of defense points on all items with bonuses to defense by approximately 33% in order to bring those items in line with other similar items.

My MC tanking set had +125 skill defense, it now has +84 - I'm usually a "roll with the punches" sort of person, but honestly I'm still shellshocked by this. I was nearly tapped out on +def gear choices I felt were acceptable, and now the 125 target I had in my mind seems nearly unattainable without making painful sacrifices.

More crits for Maintanks, or specifically more double crits for MTs and even triple crits for weakly geared Offtanks. I'm mostly concerned for groups just learning MC or those who never learned MC and decide to take the jump into Zul'Grub. What this does is extend the time investment for these raid experiences with wipes where a group does nothing wrong besides getting a bad encounter with the random number generator. To me it's blizzard's way of saying "there's not much content beyond this new stuff coming for a while, so slow down a bit guys!"

Not thrilled by the weapon delay either, but at least that isn't a 33% nerf to the effectiveness of my playstyle. :(

[Kevin]

So, does that mean that the Armorsmith's Enchanted Thorium Platemail items become an even more expensive luxury than they have been already?
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This post shows what has been checked on the test realm and yes there are hits to the enchanted thorium stuff.

[nobbie]

This post shows what has been checked on the test realm and yes there are hits to the enchanted thorium stuff.
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Ugh .. and "Ornate Adamantium Breastplate" from +15 defense down to +10. Thanks god, I didn't collect the additional materials (non-arcanite) for the Enchanted Thorium pieces yet. What a waste of very expensive stuff now.

[Olon97]

Ugh .. and "Ornate Adamantium Breastplate" from +15 defense down to +10. Thanks god, I didn't collect the additional materials (non-arcanite) for the Enchanted Thorium pieces yet. What a waste of very expensive stuff now.

Worked it out. Blizz is bestowing me with the gift of -1.64% to dodge/parry/block, changing my chance to be crit by MC mobs from 0.6% to 2.24%. I am aslo 14x more likely to be double crit.

Please forgive me if I'm not ecstatic about this change.